SEVERAL YEARS LATER…

So you’ll notice the last journal entry we wrote was a collaborate and hazy effort that we threw together during our messy, messy time in Amsterdam. After that… Nada. No more journals. Whether the excess of Amsterdam temporarily destroyed the journal producing sections of our brains or we just plain got sick of writing them, we can’t quite remember. All we know is it’s now been many, many years since that last journal and I feel compelled to attempt some sort of conclusion and give this whole travel journalism thing some closure…

A lot happened between Amsterdam and the flight home from our life changing year of adventure… We reluctantly sold our old friend slash trusty transportation VanDamme, whose new owners renamed him the less than masculine ‘Dora the explorer’, painted him green and eventually abandoned him in a parking lot in Prague after one of his breakdown hissy fits. Classic Vandamme… We sipped tea and watched lava trickle from the mouth of a snow capped volcano as the sun slowly set in Sicily… We were taken in by my amazing Maltese relatives and had a long and drawn out debate as to whether Mick pissed himself or just spilt water whilst passed out on my Auntie’s loungeroom floor after a particularly large bender… But the most significant time during this period would have to be the day we said goodbye to the backpacker lifestyle and flew home to become regular, everyday civilians again…

Whereas any normal, self respecting person would prepare and pack thier bags for such an important flight well in advance, in true backpacker style, we didn’t get our shit together until the absolute last minute. Spending the majority of our trip travelling around in Vandamme had affoded us the luxury of accumulating way more stuff than we could ever fit into our three backpacks. When we sold the van, we’d stored all this random crap in massive garbage bags at a friends house in London. Fast forward to the day we’re supposed to fly home, around about the time we’re probably supposed to be arriving at the airport and we find ourselves at our Hyde Park hostel, frantically sorting through every single possesion that has sustained us over the last year, making split second impulse decisions about what comes home with us or what gets binned. It’s a strange feeling throwing 90% of your life in the garbage but if the last year had taught us anything, it was that there’s more to life than collecting useless shit. To be fair, most of this stuff belonged in the trash anyway. Novelty boxer shorts, broken racing snail toys, tattered clothes, wigs… Most of it didn’t make the cut. Only a select few items with sentimental attatchment earned a priority place in our backpacks and the rest of it we left behind. In record time, we powered through this sorting process, packed our bags and started saying farewell to all the friends who had gathered to see us off. If it wasn’t an emotional enough experience already, the hostel’s ipod suddenly shuffled onto ‘Where Everybody Knows Your Name’, the theme song to the TV series ‘Cheers’, an incredibly poigniant reflection on all the unforgettable friendships and experiences we’d shared over the last twelve months. We couldn’t incorporate the song into the show due to copyright issues but it really was the perfect soundtrack to our departure and a very special moment for all three of us. One of the few moments during our trip where something felt significant but we were unable to include it in the series…

From the hostel, we black cabbed it to the airport, now running SIGNIFICANTLY late, and joined the queue to check in our baggage. This is around the time that Lee was being sternly spoken to by a security guard with an incredibly large rifle for filming inside the airport without permission and also around the time that Mick realised that he couldn’t find his passport which we feared was sitting in a hostel bin between some wigs and my dirty old boxers. And to top it off… we’d started drinking celebratory farewell beverages well before we began packing and were struggling to maintain our sober facades. It was looking increasingly unlikely that we were flying home today.

Fortunately, we’d had plenty of practice making close flights despite our complete lack of preparation…

Mick found his passport, Lee didn’t get shot and the three of us caught our uncatchable flight. Realistically, I think we all would have secretly enjoyed being stranded and having our holiday prolonged just a little bit longer but everything ends and our trip was no exception.

My 23 hour flight home was a huge contrast from the original flight from Melbourne to Europe a year earlier. On that first flight, I was a shy, timid introvert sitting by myself watching the same bad in-flight movies on repeat. Afraid of flying and afraid of basic communication with another human being. After this amazing year long barrage of life changing experiences, I had slowly eroded away a lot of my irrational fears and learned to embrace the random. The flight home consisted of many conversations with many complete strangers both on and off camera (between drinking the entire plane our of bourbon) but the most inspirational chat we had was with an elderly lady travelling alone, who declined to be filmed. Despite being widowed, in her late 80′s and having a heavy visual impairment, she remained independent and adventurous, telling us about her upcoming plans to fly over Antarctica (Not to fly the plane herself obviously… There’s a line between adventurous and insane and that would definitely be crossing a line but it’s still pretty freaking cool!).

As we approached the runway home, I learnt how to film myself whilst regurgitating a plane’s supply of single serve beverages into a small toilet. A skill I haven’t used since but who knows when that will come in handy…

And then, like that… It was over… We were home.

Cut to years later and I’m sitting on a laptop in my lounge (not sitting ON the laptop. I’m not typing with my ass. Don’t be foolish) trying to think of some kind of poignant conclusion. But the unfortunate fact is… I want to go to bed. So I’m going to do this… I’m going to finish this up here… and then… at a later stage… I’m going to come back… and replace this paragraph with some kind of epic, heartfelt wrap up to all these journals and to the trip itself. Something inspirational that will make you want to quit your shitty job, get out there, see the world and change your life…

…But chances are, I’ll just forget to come back and write all that and you’ll just be stuck with this. Thems are the breaks kid.

Jag